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Known as an extremely dramatic dance couple, this husband and wife
team currently live in California (Lake Arrowhead?). For a time, they
coached Bourne & Kraatz, and now remain
available to them as advisors.

Professional Competitive History

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David and his family moved from Taiwan to the USA when he was 6.
Having never seen snow before he was instantly drawn to winter and
thence to winter sports. He begain skating at age 8, but quit at 13
because it had become too expensive. Wanting to remain in the
performing arts, he applied to the School of American Ballet and
earned entry with a scholarship. Over the next 3 years he proved to
be a gifted dancer at an elite school, but the rarified air of the
dance community combined with the unfortunate (for a ballet dancer)
height mother nature had bestowed upon him resulted in a decision to
return to figure skating.

Returing to the novice level, he advanced quickly becoming a senior in
1987 at which point he was invited to represent Taiwan in international competition. Being
practical he accepted. After the '88 Olympics he semi-retired to take
a degree in international relations at Case Western Reserve in
Cleveland, training only an hour a day. But inspired by a chance
meeting with JoJo Starbuck he interrupted his schooling to devote
himself to preparing for the '92 Olympics. He has been toiling on the
verge of greatness ever since, determined to stick with amateur
competition until he has the performance in competition that he can be
proud of, that reflects his true potential.

Like many other second generation overseas Chinese (although
technically speaking he is first generation), David is a devout
Christian, something he shares in common with JoJo Starbuck.

A short note on Taiwan: The tiny
island nation, Taiwan, is the Republic of China (ROC) a
capitalist-type democratic nation (one of the main places, other than
Hong Kong, where the rich who saw the cultural revolution coming and
could move their assets quickly enough moved to). Mainland China is
the People's Republic of China (PROC), the last bastion of communism.
Both consider themselves to be "the true China". However, PROC has
enough clout in the world of international politics and commerce to
ensure that Taiwan cannot be officially recognized by people who want
to be on speaking terms with the mainland. So it is that Taiwanese
athletes cannot carry the flag of Taiwan or compete for Taiwan, they
must complete for "Chinese Taipei" under a meaningless flag.

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Michael (or Misha) began skating at the age of 4 in Odessa. As he
advanced, he soon discovered that the fact that he is Jewish was being
held against him. Officials told his mother that Russia would never
let a Jew represent their flag. After much soul searching, she
divorced her husband and married a Russian, but the fact that Michael
was so clearly not giving up his religion meant that he could still
not advance as he deserved.

In the end they decided to move to Israel where they could live with
dignity. Michael did not expect that he would be able to continue
skating in Israel which had no facilities for winter sports of any
kind. But as fate would have it, at this time a group of Canadians
from the United Israel Appeal had decided to build an ice rink, called
the Canada Centre, in Metulla, a town on the Lebanese border.

Now Michael had a place to train. Next he convinced the mayor of the
town to support his case for going to the Olympics as a one man team
representing Israel. The mayor is now president of Israel's figure
skating association.

The Canada Centre is regularly visited by Jewish-Israelis,
Arab-Israelis, children from Lebanon, and at least one world class
athlete.

The Charlotte Cup Debate
Page - the casting and designing of an imaginary figure
skating show. Warning: without image sizing support
(as in netscape) things could get ugly! This is a heavily
illustrated page